Back when I was a young one I was very dissapointed with the performance of the electrical system on this little 70. Well with all my electrical knowledge I had gained racing RC cars I realized that the less resistance in each circuit the better the performance. So I got rid of many of the butt connectors and soldered everything together. The result? A HUGE IMPROVEMENT in all categories. The thing ran about the same but damn the lights were twice as bright. The signals really really shined and blinked much better. THe horn was 2x as loud as well. I did a pretty damn good job soldering with my dads big ol' soldering gun but shinkwrap was rare back then. I used electrical tape all over the thing.

Fast Forward to today.

All of the electrical tape has basically turned into slimy tape. You can easily pull it off if it was still around the wire unions. Plus a couple of mice must have climbed into the thing and chewed away at a couple of the wires. The fuse is blown so it must have shorted out when someone crammed a new battery in the little Honda CL. No problem. All this can be fixed and updated.

So let's get comfortable and pull up a crate to sit on and get to work!

Here are the main things I need to get straightened out. There are a few exposed leads without a doubt these need to be fixed. This is pretty much a good thread to check out for people needing electrical advise for old Hondas. They are all pretty much alike. I've done a lot of them.

Nasty rat bite wires:

The connections are all good but we can do without the wire nuts and exposed wires.

Time to get real cozy with a cup of coffee and get a little familiar with the wiring diagram of the little CL70. It's VERY simple and it's a good idea to check to see that all your wires are going where they should go. If you hold it horizontally you can see that the diagram goes left to right from front to back. Pretty nice. Click here for a larger version to print out: Print this CL70 wiring diagram.

Wiring cleanup point #1. As you can see this might be an efficient connection of all four wires but it doesn't look that pretty. This is the correct arrangement of wires and Honda originally used a four lead receptacle that had four bullet male connectors plugged into it. To clean this up I extended a couple of the wires so that there was more play in the harness for tucking it away. Then I decided to add a connector so that the wires could be disconnected it need be from the front to the rear of the harness. Oh well it just looks a heck of a lot better and I now know all the connections are protected from the elements.

Exposed copper wire results in premature corrosion of the wires:

Just follow the numbers wires. The two wires from the left #1 and #2 were extended with brown wire and then put into a female connector. These would then be plugged into the #3 and #4 wires that were joined into the male connector.

This is as good as the solder would stick to the really old copper wire. If it was clean, new copper wire then the solder would have mated much better. It works fine as it is. We gotta work with what we have.

Wire union just before the shrink wrap was applied.

And finally the 4 way union of all the wires. You can't even see the original #1 and #2 wires as they were so short.

Remember this nasty wire?You get 2 points if you spotted the spider in the background!! I didn't realize that little guy was down there watching me work!

Here is the fixed version:

I trimmed the large exposed areas from the wire and I still had enough slack to simply solder the bullet connector back to the remaining wire. I got lucky but if I still needed to retain the same length then I would have just spliced in an extension. To preserve the wire that was left I put some shrink wrap over it before I connected the wires to be soldered back in place. Done deal.

Now here's a rundown of exactly where each of these wires comes from. Listen closely, it's not that difficult. Follow the numbers.

This is the harness that comes from the engine. IE: condenser, points, neutral switch, coil, alternator. I made extra sure to take care of the wires in the fabric sheathing. They are in extra heavy shielding for a reason.

This is the harness that comes down from the handlebar controls.

These wires loosely route through the rear of the frame to the turn signals and rear brake light.

The wires in this black loom are for turn signal relay and also rear brake light switch (you know.. on the rear brake lever).

Rectifier wires are NOT marked yet but can be seen below. They are the yellow, red/white, green and pink (can barely see the pink) wire loom. Look closely.

And there you go! Here is a pic of all the tools I used during my fun time spent working on the CL70 today. If I didn't have two V8 engines on my long motorcycle workbench I would have this bike up off the ground. Oh well I'm not planning on working on this little bike THAT much. You gotta love a professional soldering iron (bottom left). I HIGHLY recommend that you break down and find one on Ebay or Craigslist. They are worth every single penny. Using those cheap pencil irons or bulky automotive style irons are a waste of time and you'll laugh at the thought of using anything less.

How many miles are on this bike? I'm almost sure nothing is broken just from being "old". Unless you see damage inflicted upon a component consider it working. I would almost gaurantee that its a shorted wire somewhere. The ignition switch is a physical electrical component which CAN wear out after years of use. You can just take both wires from the back of it and connect them to bypass it. Nice and simple test. I have a toggle switch on mine.

The wires in these bikes sure look like a mess as they get old but it's really easy to sort out once you take things apart. If mine didn't work ok I would put a new harness together with modern connectors and everything. But mine keeps on chugging. These are awesome bikes to use for taking to the race track to get around, camping or whatever. I wouldn't trade mine for anything. I can seriously do wheelies on mine, hehe. And these are street legal.. What a bargain.